


Arides' tale

by mikato1



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crossover, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10082378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikato1/pseuds/mikato1
Summary: The story begins with my OC, Arides (pronounced Eh-Rhee-Dess, because diacritical marks are in there that I can't put in there with a keyboard) telling the story of how he created an organization devoted to keeping fanfic separate from the work it alludes to. My plan is to have him tell the many stories of his time farting about across the endless multiverse, and his exploits in the worlds of many of my favorite media.





	

**Author's Note:**

> no real plans on an update schedule yet, I've got too many ideas buzzing in my head to focus on more than one project at a time, and that focus is currently on my other story, Red Fountain Tedd.

Chapter One: the genesis of a man's own world  
\---  
I had a journal once. That journal is long since lost to the winds of eternity. There really was just too much to chronicle in anything made of mere paper. Even if I could have put my tale on paper, it would be divided into so many volumes, each with so many pages, that even a set of the indexes of its contents would fill the space of several galaxies.  
And honestly, for all that I'd like to think I'm a remarkably noteworthy individual, my daily doings are hardly worthy of such a log. My name is Arides, and I believe I shall now retell some of my more interesting exploits anew, to please those that would have it so.  
\---  
As with all good stories, even mine must have a beginning, though that is a good while before the beginning of the tale you're interested in. You see, I was not always an entity of such power that I can be referred to as a "Mary Sue." I will fully admit to and embrace this derogatory title now, but once, I was a child, merely human, in a world where "magic" was the name of a game played with cards. And no, I cannot even claim to be from the world those cards depict.

  
One night, however, I had an unusually vivid dream. One of the kind referred to as 'lucid', where you know full well you're asleep and dreaming. In this dream, I found myself in a place I recognized as from a painting. The painting was "Starry Night" by a man known as Van Gogh.

  
Knowing that I was not truly here, and merely dreaming, I felt safe enough in reaching up and plucking one of the stars the place was named for from its sky. It pulsed with power beyond what I ever could previously have imagined. And yet, that power was but an infinitesimal fraction of the power I sensed it could hold. Emboldened by this acquisition, I took another. It, too, held power, and could hold more power yet.

  
Already having two fathomless sources of power, I didn't see a bloody point in being greedy and grabbing a third. I did, however, discover that, by the logic of dreams, I could use a kind of magic, simply by thinking on what I believed should be so. As I conceived of a thing, and put the will into its coming about, it would happen. I felt a bit of energy drain from me each time, seeming to be relative to the complexity and scale of the task, but this felt only natural.

  
After a time, I felt as though I'd jogged a few blocks at a pace faster than I usually move. The idea struck me to borrow a bit of power from the stars I'd grabbed. I immediately felt as though I'd had a full night's rest, a full meal, and a gallon of coffee, to boot. The stars hardly felt less for it, but I noticed that the barest fraction of what they held was more than I did at my best.

  
After a time, I'd had my fun in this painted dreamscape, and my body in reality had had its fill of sleep. As I awoke, however, I found myself still clutching two little points of light in my hand.

  
It didn't take me long to stash those in my pocket as I dressed for school that morning. I tried using the magic in subtle ways, and found it worked. Oh, the pranks I pulled that day. Small potatoes at this point, but those are memorable for their simplicity, back when I had to think about _if_ a thing was possible, before I knew the better question was _how_.

  
After school let out that day (I hadn't been caught with any of the pranks. The pranks were mundane, but the methods weren't. Untraceable by anyone there.) I went home, and, since I was already known for hiding in my room after school, that is where I went.

  
I promptly decided I wanted to visit another world while awake. Envisioning a portal to another world as not only possible, but belonging in front of me, I reached out with the magic I'd gotten, and stepped through back into the world of the painting. I took a brief look around, and discovered that it took a lot of energy to maintain a planar Gate. I pocketed a few more stars, on a hunch related to an idea, and returned to my room, closing the portal.

  
A week or so passed, and in my dreams, I ended up in a few places, mostly the worlds of books I'd been reading. This gave me further ideas, and they became a part of my project. That project was, quite simply, the creation of my own world.

  
That project was extremely energy-intensive, but I did it over a week. And instead of resting on Sunday, like in the bible, that was the day on which I actually embarked on another mission, the mission for which this world I made was only a means to an end: I spoke with the heroes of many of those worlds I found, and recruited them to the cause of what became the FOLLOWER.

  
The heroes themselves remain where they belong, but I had the power to create a duplicate of them to join my growing crew. I also recruited many civilians and bystanders from these worlds, who actually came over, or were cloned on a case-by-case basis. The heroes' clones were of course accompanied by clones of their loved ones.

  
I was considered top dog in the growing ranks of this organization, more because it was my idea than anything else at first.

  
I was growing in my own reserves of raw power rather quickly, on account of having been exercising it very thoroughly, and the first two stars I took not only remained untouched, but I filled them with power I wasn't using.

  
After a time of rapid expansion, the FOLLOWER remained stable for a while, as I and the various people I'd recruited hashed out how the organization would work. That framework, sparse as it ultimately was, is still pretty much how we do things. The gist of it was that when we weren't actively preventing similar but distinct worlds from colliding and ruining each other, we would teach each other our own techniques, and explain how to use each other's abilities.  
Long story has a long beginning, but that's how it started. FOLLOWER grew substantially after that, but it wasn't really all that interesting for a long-ass time, and that's another tale to tell, so you'll have to wait a bit for that.


End file.
